I downloaded and installed the beta version of Firefox 3.0 a few days ago and have been using it since on my OS X Leopard laptop.
I also installed the Proto theme for Mac Firefox which significantly enhances the look of Firefox 3 on the Mac.
My initial impressions of Firefox 3.0b1 are very positive. It is fast, stable, looks really sweet and many of the memory issues which have dogged Firefox appear to have been fixed.
To expand on the memory comment, in Firefox the memory used to leak so the longer it remained open, the more memory it consumed. I have had Firefox running on this Mac now for several days with up to six windows open some of which have up to twenty five tabs running. Currently this is using 1.38gb of virtual memory. At the same time, Safari which has one window open with two tabs running is consuming 1.41gb of virtual memory!
Another change is the ability to Star and Tag bookmarks. Personally I prefer the way Flock allows you to bookmark directly into Del.icio.us.
One disadvantage of running the Firefox beta is that none of my favourite plugins now work but at least Del.icio.us have a bookmarklet which runs well out of the bookmarks toolbar so I can still bookmark there from Firefox.
The release notes list a raft of improvements under the headings:
- More Security
- Easier to Use
- More Personal
- Improved Platform for Developers and
- Improved Performance
Overall, I like it. It seems much improved, more responsive and less of a memory hog. Shades of good things to come!
After Steve Clayton demoed it to me last week, I decided to try playing around with Microsoft’s Popfly. Popfly is a tool for creating Mashups in Silverlight, with a drag and drop interface.
It comes with a tutorial (on right) and the interface is easy to get used to. In fact it is even easier to use than Yahoo Pipes.
I built the app below in a few clicks. It displays the status of my Facebook contacts.
This app was created in Firefox on my MacBook Pro.
One glitch I did note was that you can’t write into the Search box (when using Firefox on a Mac).
Ubuntu 7.10 (aka Gutsy Gibbon) has a DNS-related bug.
I referred to it when I posted about having upgraded to 7.10 last week but since then I have found how to get around it.
First the problem -
After the upgrade, browsers, mail clients and other Internet-related applications run very slowly. Loading pages in Firefox can take 30+ seconds and sending/receiving emails seems interminable too.
On inspection, the Network settings seems to forget any custom settings (I had pointed it at the OpenDNS servers). Adding the OpenDNS servers to the router’s settings didn’t help. Re-adding the DNS servers to the Network Settings helped for about five minutes when it would once again lose the configuration and slow down.
Checking the Ubuntu forums I discovered that this appears to be related to IPv6.
I tried the following suggestion and it fixed the problem for me straightaway:
- IPv6 is supported by default in Ubuntu and can sometimes cause problems
- To disable it, open a Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type the command: gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
- Find the line alias net-pf-10 ipv6 and change it to read alias net-pf-10 off
- Reboot Ubuntu
Everything is zinging along happily on my laptop once more!
Tom’s on holidays, I’ll be your host for today. My name’s Frank P, you might remember me from such blogs as “BifSniff.com”,” FestivalShirts.net/blog” and “Aonach.com/chatter”.
Damien asks us what our site stats for Firefox are after reading the results of a survey by XiTi monitor which shows Firefox having 38.6% marketshare in Ireland.
You can read more about the survey and it’s findings on itWire.com
A study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that FF had 27.8% market share across Eastern and Western Europe
With regard to Damien’s question: For BifSniff.com Google Analytics puts Firefox at 39.54% for the month of June - that’s for all traffic not just European traffic (Northern Europe accounts for 50.48% of that traffic with Ireland accounting for 18.59%).
I had a problem with my MacBookPro the other day. It lost Internet connectivity. It couldn’t get an IP address from the DSL router. Restarting the router didn’t help. Nor did stopping and starting Airport or using a wired connection.
At first I figured the router was fried. But then, I restarted the Mac and lo! connectivity came back.
I wrote it off as a once off and didn’t think any more of it.
Then over the next few days I had problems with Firefox freezing. Uninstalling plugins didn’t help. What did fix it was closing all the tabs which contained Silverlight content.
Then the problem with the Mac losing Internet connectivity recurred. Several times. Both at the home office and outside of it.
I finally had an Aha! moment. I searched the hard drive for all occurrences of Silverlight, found the Silverlight plugin, deleted it and re-started the Mac.
I haven’t lost Internet connectivity since!
Has anyone else had this happen to them?
Richard MacManus, over on Read/WriteWeb has an extremely comprehensive must read post on his forecast for what will be hot in 2007.
His predictions for 2007:
RSS will go mainstream
Structured data will be a big trend
Widgets will continue rising in 2007
Web Office will continue to ramp up
The consumerization of the enterprise trend will start to infiltrate corporate IT
Rich Internet Apps will be a major force
Google in particular will continue to push the boundaries of browser-based apps
Semantic Web products will come of age
Expect more big things from Amazon
Expect some shakeups in the online advertising market
Watch out for developments in 2007 along the lines of a better, more robust online ad model
2007 will be about Search 2.0 and the rise of the vertical search engines
Microsoft’s Windows Live services will gain real momentum next year
Google may come out with some form of GoogleOS
Open Source Desktops will continue to gain momentum in ‘07
Expect the competition between IE7 and FireFox (plus Flock, Opera and Maxthon) to be intense
Expect Safari compatibility to rise sharply in 2007
Internet-based TV will ramp up in 2007
2007 will undoubtedly be a good year for P2P
SecondLife will become an important platform for marketing, promotion, and of course social networking
Virtual Money: Paypal showed the way, and we’re seeing more of it now - SecondLife LindeX, Microsoft points etc.
The online real estate market will grow rapidly in ‘07
The search for disruptive business models will continue!
Social networks will probably also become more open - and data portability will start to occur
International Web will finally start to get its due in mainstream media
One Laptop Per Child will create good buzz and may increase the adoption of thin-client like computers
Broadband continues to grow
VoIP space will really hot up
Mobile Web may be the big story of 2007
Mobile will be a bigger development and advertising platform in ‘07
watch for an emerging Webphone market - for example Apple’s rumored iPhone and a GooglePhone.
Check out Richard’s post for an explanation of each of these predictions.
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